Hush

This painting of our Our Lady adoring her Child while little St. John the Baptist tells the veiwers to hush is just darling.

random thoughts

• I admire the dedication and organization skills of home schooling parents. Public education is really about breaking the will and teaching kids to shut up and go along with the crowd.
  
  
• Reading New Liturgical Movement isn't any fun anymore. The commenters aren't happy about anything ever. They can see photos of a beautiful TLM offered by a bright, shiny young priest and in a place that hasn't had one in decades and still complain that the third deacon's hair is too long or that the altar boy's shoes are scuffed.
  
  
  
• Facebook is a dangerous toy. I was reading a co-worker's page at her invitation and it left me almost quesy. I learned a few disgusting things about some other co-workers that I REALLY would have prefered not to know. None of these people would stand up in a conference room at work and say these things but they cheerfully wrote it up on Facebook. When you get on Facebook you are exposing your personal business and the business of your friends to the whole gawking world.  You may think nobody but your nearest and dearest are going to read it but that's just wishful thinking. Once it's online it's public and it's forever. It only takes one person to pass on a post that they read and then boom you have some 'splainn' to do at work or school or home. People have gotten divorced, fired, demoted, expelled from school, arrested and even been exposed to death threats becuase of things they stupidly wrote on Facebook. I've told my friends and family that I'm passing on this fad.
  
  
  
• I bought a new veil. It's going to be for special occasions.
  
  
• I suspect that Miss Ann Barnhardt is right. HT Sancte Pater. Warning. Her language is frank. Very frank.
  
  
  
• Pay, pray, pray for the Holy Father.
  
  
  
• Some people got all snippy at seeing the Dalai Lama at a Pentecost Mass in Germany. I wasn't among them. Unbelievers are welcome at Mass as long as they behave and don't try to take Communion and many conversions have been made this way. Once in what is now France a barbarian king went to the Christian church out of curiosity. He'd resisted all the efforts of the missionaries but was converted by when he saw the priest raise the Host. Suddenly he realized that there was only one God and that the One God was present on the Christian's altar. That barbarians curiosity changed history. Something made the Dalai want to go to Mass. Something may come of it. Who knows?
  
  
• Pay attention to this story. It could be rotten kids or it could be a sign that France is about to have a really bad time. St. Joan, pray for us.
  

Pray for the Pope

"For even the man of peace, in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, hath greatly supplanted me. "

Please pray for the Pope. His butler, a man whom he obviously sees every day, who handles his meals, and runs his household has betrayed him. He must feel it very keenly.

Sacred Heart

  Thank You Lord for Your wonderous mercy.

random thoughts

• It blows my mind that that the archdiocese of New York only produced one priest this year. I've read various explanations for this but it's still shocking. God bless Fr. Patric D'Arcy and send the Church more like him. Cardinal Dolan has a LOT of work to do.

• Speaking of Cardinal Dolan, why do photographers always wait until his mouth is wide open before they take the photo?
  
  
• I have no use for Patheos but posts like this are why I keep reading Katrina Fernandez.
  
  
  
• If the SSPX decides to accept the Vatican's terms I wonder if the same bloggers who went into estacy over the Anglicans will muster up even a lukewarm welcome?
  
  
  
• It's awesome that 43 Catholic institutions are suing over the contraception mandate but this is only a start.
  
  
• I recently read a post from a blogger I won't name who bemoaned the frumpiness of Catholic women. I say nuts to that. I have a friend who has 8 kids. She has had at least two babies in her house concurently for her entire marriage. Who in their right mind expects her to go faffing about in Dior? She's produced 8 nice little Catholics, two are altar boys, one is an Eagle Scout and she teaches CCD at her parish. On top of that she's the first one to volunteer when her priest needs something.  She doesn't own any Jimmy Choos but so what? If your life is like my friend's go ahead and wear your Keds and sensible denim jumper if that is what suits you.
  
  When I was in high school if I wasn't wearing my uniform I lived in Gunne Sax and Jessica McClintock. I looked like a cross between Sara Crewe from A Little Princess and Meryl Streep in The French Leutienent's Woman. Since it was the '80s and everyone else was trying to be Madonna my look was not popular. In fact, I caught flack for it. I didn't care. As long as your attire is not sinfully immodest wear what floats your own boat.  Ignore the mean girls.

Cuzco School art

What a sweet face.  I love Peruvian colonial esclesiastical art.

Pray for our priests

Blessed Jerzy

Father Vera

St. Maximilan

St. John Nepomuk

St. John Fisher

Please pray for your brother priests.

Our Lady Consolation of the Afflicted

the fort is betrayed, even by those who should have defended it

In the last few days I've noticed a number of professional blogger writing these farewell to traditional marriage posts. Some, like the Anchoress, whom I just can't bear to read anymore, say give in to the state and push for the Revolutionary French solution*: everyone, gay, straight, whatever goes to the courthouse and get your legal, civilly acknowledged union and let then go to your own church, synagogue, generic faintly Christian worship space, coven circle or fetish hut ...and get married according to your own rite.

As I've said before, that sounds inoffensive, at least on paper and the suggestion that Christians simply ignore the State altogether and only have Church weddings sounds interesting as well. The people who argue for this alternate solution point out that wives and children need not fear for their financial future under this plan because the State says that children born out of legal wedlock get the same as children born in wedlock and that a legal concubine of long standing can end up with just as much money as a married wife. They insist that the only way the State can pick on Christians who refuse a civil union would be if it goes after all the single mothers on welfare and all the people who are living in sin together and that's not going to happen.

These arguments are interesting in a dry, clinical sort of way. It's rather like dissecting a frog in Science class. I suspect that most of these compromisers were never really down for the cause of traditional marriage anyway. Instead of the trenches they were always in sick bay or the canteen  but never mind that for now. What all these people fail to mention is that the reason it seems like the proponents of traditional marriage are losing the fight is that, to paraphrase St. John Fisher, the fort has been betrayed. I've said before, normal people degraded and defiled marriage decades ago. We are like the Romans who woke up and were horrified when the Vandals and Visigoths broke in and started killing, looting and raping. Rome had been in decline for a long time. There were huge cracks in both civil society and in the military defenses. Their own decadence, and stupidity made it easy for the barbarians. And here we are. It's impossible to hold the line when the fort has a huge gaping hole in the wall.


*The French, really? Post Vendee, a thousand cowardly surrender jokes come to mind but you've heard them all.

Confession

I love this painting by Edmund Leighton. Judging by the look on the Domincan priest's face the old gentleman had one humdinger of a burden on his soul.

Madonna of the Arbor

A veil giveaway

The lovely Gina of the My Broken Fiat blog is having a veil giveaway. It's a very pretty item that comes from Liturgical Time. The owner/seamstress does really fine work. I'm going to order one of her triangle mantillas or a princess style one and I am definitely going to get this little treat.

Motherhood is forever

To every mother who ever lost a child.....it's a tough day and some people are so spectacularly dense...may you find comfort and  peace.

Ascension Thursday Mass

St. Rita's is having a high Mass in the Tridentine form on Thursday at 7:30.

Did you know that Time used to be a serious magazine?

My mother once mentioned to me that all of her mother's friends breastfed until their children were about four or five as a birth control method. However, none of those women exposed their naked breasts in public and none of them did it with the intention of being an exhibitionist. My mother says that ladies either left the room if someone other than a family member was present or they covered themselves with a shawl. Discreetly feeding your baby is a long, long way from the freak show on this month's Time Magazine cover.


Someone may be thinking, 'Dymphna, what about all those paintings of Our Lady nursing?' Well, what about 'em? Those paintings show a private moment in Our Lady's life. There is nothing in the Bible or in archaeology that suggests that respectable, married Jewish matrons allowed their bare bosoms to be seen by strangers.

Two cool things and one that is definitely not

• My parish has the Vatican II hymnals by Corpus Christi Watershed press. When I first saw them I was a bit worried. Despite the name, I'm happy to report, the book does not contain any hippy dippy music, no Lord of the Dance, no Eagles Wings. It does contain simple, sober hymns, beautiful artwork, and the readings for every Sunday and Feast so we have been able to get rid of those nasty, flimsy misalettes. It has the order of the Mass in Latin and English for the Novus Ordo and the TLM and all the sung propers. If your church musician uses the hymnal the way it was designed you will hear chant at Mass. Well played, Father Eagle!

• I just downloaded the Laudete Catholic app for my  Droid phone and I love it. It has the rosary, chaplets, daily readings, the liturgy of the hours and hundreds of prayers. It's also free. 

• I was reading Crisis magazine and came across this old chestnut by Steve Skojec. He was going on about how Christians need to be engaged in the culture. Here is a culture story for you: Last week a co-worker went to an after work get together at a local bar. At the party a man told a "hilarious" story about his adventure with a stripper/prostitute at his friend's bachelor party. It was disgusting. To put it delicately, he performed a sex act with the prostitute in public that I can not describe. If anyone at the table found this shocking or even mildly distasteful they did not show it My co-worker said that the women as well as the men laughed and egged the man on to tell more. These people were all middle and upper class. All were college educated. They were to sort of people who are held up as examples by the rest of us when we talk to the underclass kids.The man who told the foul tale is a corporate attorney. My co-worker is Catholic. That's your mainstream, pornified everyday normal culture folks and had I been there I would not have been engaged. I would've walked out. Life in America is a magnificent banquet. There are wonderful things on the table and there's some poison items as well. Refusing to eat everything on the table does not make you a sheltered, delicate, useless, humourless geek.

What a bunch of brats

A group of Georgetown students vandalized the steps of the campus chapel with condoms strewn about. I’ve been to Dahlgren Chapel. It was more like a pagan ceremonial room than a church and I was happy to get out of there  but the Blessed Sacrament was and is there so this ugly act is inexcusable. It costs $40,920.00 to go to Georgetown U. full time. For that kind of money--and lab fees, room and board are not included in that figure, I expect a kid to act like he or she wasn’t raised in a saloon. What a bunch of spoiled brats. Clearly somebody needs to be expelled and have their extended adolescence brought to a sudden but overdue end.

P.S.

Georgetown University has just announced that Kathleen Sibelious, is going to be the 2012, graduation speaker. Oh come Cardianal Wuerl, what will it take to say that this aint a Catholic school anymore?

Presented with a raised eyebrow

After reading this and this  and this I am reminded that lay apologists shoud be looked upon with great care. 

Oh Mary, seat of Wisdom, pray for us.